Beauty Reborn
by Katie-hime
Summary: There's a reason Hermione grew up loving books; it's time for it to find her again.
1. Dreaming

Hermione awoke with a shudder; a sudden relaxing of muscles that had been tensed in reaction to her disturbed sleep. _Another dream,_ she thought as she sank back onto her pillow with a sigh.

She'd been dreaming for weeks now, strange dreams only half remembered for a few minutes after she woke. Every night, without fail, she dreamed. Every morning, without fail, she woke up feeling she was missing something, something desperately important.

Sighing again, she rolled over, pulling her wand from its holster on her left arm as she did. She cast a silent tempus, groaning as it flashed a time far too early at her. An hour still before she had to be up for work. She sat up and swung her legs over the side of the bed with a huff, groping for her slippers with her toes. Bleary-eyed, she grabbed her bathrobe and stumbled her way down the stairs to the kitchen. If she was going to be up, she might as well have tea.

Kettle on the hob and leaves waiting in the pot, she stood over the sink, staring out the window at the glow of the city around her. She stirred only when the kettle whistled, moving to silence it before it woke her house mate. She added the water to the pot resting on the sturdy kitchen table, then moved to a cupboard to take down a mug. Her hand hesitated; should she not be reaching for porcelain instead…? Shaking herself, she grabbed her favorite mug decisively, turning and setting it down on the table with a thump. She sat down in front of it and the pot, then crossed her arms on the table, resting her forehead on them and breathing deeply.

When she had calmed herself enough, she sat up and reached for the teapot. Again, she hesitated as she moved to pour, stopping just before the tea began flowing out of the spout of the battered old pot. _I find that most problems look better after a warm cuppa tea…._

"That's it," she muttered to herself. "I'm finally going mad."

"Are you now?"

Hermione started hard, a gush of tea erupting out of the shaken pot. She yelped, setting the pot down quickly, then spun towards the door. "Harry," she growled, "must you sneak about the house?"

Her best friend and house mate, Harry Potter, had the grace to look sheepish as he crossed the kitchen to settle at the table beside her, getting out a mug for himself on the way. "I did call out coming down the stairs, Hermione," he said, ignoring her indignant hmmph as he cleaned up the spill with an efficient wand flick, then poured tea for both of them. "So why do you think you're going mad?"

"It's these bloody dreams," she grumbled. "They leave me with the barest of impressions, yet I can't shake the feeling that I'm missing something _important_ , that if I could only concentrate harder, remember a little longer…"

"Still not sleeping well, then."

She laughed wryly. "Harry, it's half fucking five in the morning. Do I seem like I'm sleeping well?" He snorted; both of them paused and lifted their mugs for a sip.

"Have you considered that this could be something left over from the war?" He asked quietly, still cradling his mug.

"It's been eight years, Harry, and I did see a Mind Healer for the first one."

"Still," he replied, his green eyes coming up to meet hers, unimpeded by the thick lenses that had once hidden them; he had gone for Muggle laser vision correction a year back.

"No," she cut him off. "What little I do remember of the dreams… This is nothing to do with the war."

"What do you remember?"

Hermione stared into space, her tea sending up wisps of steam that seemed to nearly form pictures in her mind.

"I remember yellow," she started slowly. "And I remember ice. A castle… not Hogwarts, somewhere different. And… blue eyes. The most beautiful blue eyes…."

The friends sat in silence for long minutes, their tea growing cold. Finally, Hermione's wand buzzed, startling them both. It was her alarm; time to get up and start a new day. Gently, she laid her hand on it, deactivating the spell.

Harry reached over and picked up her hand off her wand, squeezing it. "It will pass, Mione."

"Yes, I suppose it will," she sighed. With that, the two friends got up to go and start getting ready for their work day, leaving the half empty teapot sitting abandoned on the table.


	2. Crashing

Weeks passed; the dreams didn't. If anything, they became more intense. Some days, she was waking up afraid, some in tears, some with a profound sense of happiness.

Then there were the days she woke hot, intense blue eyes echoing in her mind, reaching for another body that wasn't there.

Those days were always the worst.

Harry helped her as best he could. He brought home the ingredients for Dreamless Sleep and kept her focused while she brewed it; it didn't work. He made sure he was up at the same time as her to make her tea, and breakfast when she could stomach it. When she still refused to go see a Healer, he started finding excuses to go to bed earlier and earlier, making her do the same. The extra hours of sleep before the dreams began did help, but not enough.

Ten weeks after the dreams started, Hermione was a wreck, and people were starting to notice. Her colleagues in the Department of Mysteries had been asking for the last week if she was alright, eyeing the bags under her eyes and her increasingly listless expression with concern. Even Croaker had pulled her aside for a quiet conversation about her health. She couldn't tell them, though; after all, what was there to tell? She was having nightly dreams she didn't remember. That was it.

(A more rested Hermione may have been concerned with the fact that Dreamless Sleep didn't stop them; however, exhaustion had numbed that rational part of her mind weeks ago.)

She felt numb as she tried to reassure Croaker she was fine, not realizing that her near-monosyllabic answers were causing him even more concern. He sighed as she repeated, "Really, I'm fine," for the fourth time that conversation.

"Look, Granger, you're clearly not fine at all," he said as gently as possible. "Now, it's usually not my business what you do outside of the Department; it becomes my business when if affects your work. You're slipping, girl. DeVries and Smith have come to me because you've been missing details and making mistakes, something _we can't afford_ when you're working on five thousand year old cursed artifacts that could kill everyone in the building if they're mishandled. I'm pulling you off the Avebury investigation."

"Wh… WHAT! Croaker, you can't do that, I'm the one who…"

"Who found the tablets that were causing the disturbances amongst the visitors to the site, yes. That doesn't change the fact that you're in no shape to handle them."

Hermione deflated, her momentary rage swept away by his blunt appraisal. She the urge to rub at her eyes, which were drying out rapidly. "You're right, I suppose," she sighed. "What am I to be doing, then?"

"Pulling yourself together, whatever that may take," he grumbled, eyeing her intently. "Christ, girl, you weren't this bad when you broke it off with Weasley."

She grimaced at the reminder. It had taken entirely too long for her to realize that she and Ron had very different ideas of what life was going to be like, and they had both been miserable by the time their messy split had happened two years previous. They were still trying to find their way back to the friendship they had had before things had gotten… complicated.

"It's not romantic difficulties," she growled back. _For that, there would need to be some romance to start with,_ she added with an internal huff. "I simply haven't been sleeping well."

"Then go and see a Healer!" he barked. "In fact, I'm sending you right now. I don't want to see you back here without a note from your Healer; your next assignment will be waiting on your desk for whenever that may be."

"But!... Croaker!... GAH!"

She spun on her heel and stomped to her office, infuriated by his disappearing act (something she had to admit he was very good at). "Pulling me off Avebury, sending me to a Healer, the nerve!" she muttered as she began to compulsively tidy the papers on her desk. In her agitated state, she moved too fast, knocking a large stack off the edge and eliciting a short scream of rage. She collapsed back onto her chair, trying to not burst into tears.

When she finally settled herself ten minutes later, Hermione sighed. _Maybe Croaker and Harry are right, and I do need to go see a Healer,_ she thought as she tilted her head back to stare at the ceiling. _Damned if I'll go to St. Mungo's, though, after they sold everything to the papers last time. I wonder…_

She moved over to her fireplace, grabbing a handful of floo powder from the pot on the mantle. Tossing a pinch into the flames, she knelt down and stated, "Abbott Clinic."

A short wait later, a familiar face appeared in the fire. "Abbott Medical Clinic, how can I help you?" a pleasant baritone asked.

"Hello, Dean."

"Hermione! How have you been? How's Harry?" the former Gryffindor asked with a grin. His face fell as he took in her ragged appearance. "Hermione, are you alright?"

"No, I suppose I'm not," she replied quietly. "Has Hannah got any openings?"

"Give me a moment, I'll find out."

She nodded as he disappeared from the fire, catching the concern on his face as he left. As she waited, Hermione tried to calm herself again; admitting that she wasn't alright, even in such a simple capacity, had been harder than she had anticipated.

It didn't take long before Dean appeared again. "She can see you now, if you can come by."

"Yes, I'm available; give me a moment to grab my cloak, and I'll come through?"

"Sure," her friend said, smiling gently as he moved away from the floo connection.

Hermione stood up and gathered her cloak and bag from their hook by her door, which she closed. She hesitated as she moved back to the fireplace; did she really want to do this?

 _Don't be a fool,_ she scolded herself. _You know what sleep deprivation does to cognitive function. You've faced worse than telling a friend you're not sleeping, now get your rump over there!_

Dean greeted her with another smile as she stepped through the floo into the quiet office. "Come on back," he said, turning towards the door that led to the patient consultation rooms. He showed her to a room that contained a desk on one side, and a coffee table surrounded by a sofa and two soft chairs on the other. The window showed a pleasant meadow perched at the top of a hill, with forested hills rolling away in the background: an enchantment for sure, as it ought to look out over the narrow alleyway between this building and the next.

"Go ahead and get yourself settled," Dean said, gesturing for her to enter. "She's just finishing up with another patient, she shouldn't be more than a few minutes."

"Thanks, Dean," Hermione said with a small smile as she passed him. He gently closed the door behind her as she headed for the couch; it was one of the type that seemed to eat you when you sat down. She sank into it, wiggling a little bit to get more comfortable after she set her cloak and bag down on the coffee table. _I'll just rest my eyes until Hannah comes in,_ she thought as she drifted off.

Hannah Abbott entered her office quietly, pausing at the door as she took in her next patient. Hermione was dozing, slumped over on the couch. There were bags under her eyes; her complexion was waxy, and there was a gauntness to her cheeks that Hannah had never seen before, not even when the Golden Trio had reappeared right before the Battle of Hogwarts.

"Hermione," she called gently from across the room, remembering from the papers _(What a clusterfuck that had been…)_ that shaking one of the Trio awake was a distinctly bad idea, likely to get one hexed.

The woman didn't stir.

"Hermione," she repeated, more insistent. This time, the woman grunted, blinking slowly.

"Hannah?" she asked blearily, struggling to open her eyes.

"Yes, Hermione; do you remember where you are?"

"Came to see you," the brunette mumbled as she pulled herself upright. "Sorry; I didn't mean to fall asleep."

"That's alright, Hermione," Hannah replied as she settled herself into one of the chairs, balancing the clipboard with Hermione's chart attached on the arm. "I'm fairly sure I can guess, but tell me what brought you in?"

Hermione snorted at the way Hannah had phrased that; she supposed it _was_ getting that obvious, especially when caught during an impromptu nap. "I've not been sleeping well," she stated bluntly. "I keep being woken by dreams that I can't remember."

"Mmm," Hannah replied eloquently, jotting something down with a pen. "How long has this been going on?"

"Two and a half months."

"And how much sleep would you say you're getting each night?"

"Three or four hours."

Hannah paused; two and a half months of that level of sleep deprivation… she would need to do a complete physical.

"This may seem a stupid question, but have you tried Dreamless Sleep?"

"Yes, weeks ago; it doesn't work."

"Odd," the Healer replied. "Where did you get the brew?"

"Made it myself. I had it tested by a lab when it didn't work; it's standard strength."

"Mmm," Hannah repeated. She spent a few moments writing, the set down her pen and looked up. "What can you tell me about the dreams?"

"Not much," Hermione replied as she turned to stare out the window; the meadow was soothing. "Just impressions. Colours, feelings… a pair of eyes…"

"And are the dreams always the same?"

"No. I wake up feeling differently each day; angry, scared, happy, content… and whatever I'm feeling, I feel so _strongly_. But I can never remember why."

"Any major changes in your life that could have brought this on? A new relationship, change at your workplace?"

"Not that I can think of."

They sat quietly again while Hannah wrote.

"Any difficulties getting to sleep?"

"Some," Hermione admitted. "I've been worrying so much about what I'm going to wake up feeling…."

"So the dreams are causing you some anxiety as well; is that fair to say?"

Hermione let out a wry, humourless laugh. "Fair to say? Hannah, I can't get to sleep properly, I can't wake up properly, I have hardly any appetite, I'm losing weight, I'm making mistakes at work… they're causing more than _some_ anxiety."

"Right," Hannah said as she set her pen down. "I'm going to run a full scan and a brain scan; let's see if we can't pinpoint what's causing this."

Hermione sat still as the magic washed over her, generating a stack of paper on the coffee table. _Must ask Hannah how she modified the spell to get paper instead of parchment,_ Hermione mused idly as she waited while the Healer read the results. It took long enough that she was starting to drift off again before Hannah had finished, which, in truth, wasn't really all that long.

"As far as the scans are concerned, Hermione, your body and brain are suffering the effects of long-term sleep deprivation, but nothing else," Hannah stated. "We have two options at this point; I'd like you to consider a combination of both.

"Not many know this, but I've got a Muggle MD as well as my Healer's certification; I used a bit of magic so that I wouldn't have to repeat courses and such. I can write you a script for temazepam, a Muggle sleeping pill, which should help you get to sleep faster and stay asleep for longer. However, that's only a short-term solution to try and bring your body back into balance.

"I'd also like you to start coming in once every few days for therapy." She held up her hand as she saw Hermione starting to object. "I know your last experience with a Mind Healer wasn't positive, what with it ending up splashed all over the papers as it did. However, your subconscious is clearly trying to deal with something, and that won't go away until you've realized what it is and confronted it. I can help you do that; maybe not as well as a specialist, but you know I'd never sell you out. I don't fancy being branded a sneak in boils across my forehead," she finished with a grin.

Hermione considered the offer. She knew that Hannah was probably right about needing therapy as well as physical treatment; but could she trust the other woman?

 _You've trusted her before and she hasn't let you down,_ her consciousness murmured. _Besides, aren't you tired? Tired of waking up feeling so much, tired of the stress, tired of making mistakes and excuses? Just plain tired?_

"Alright," she said slowly. "But Merlin help you if you so much as mention this to anyone, Hannah Abbott. Boils will be the least of your worries!"

"It's alright, Hermione. I only want to help you, I swear it." Those were serious words for any witch or wizard; although not as powerful as an oath, if Hannah went back on her word, there would be consequences imposed by Magic herself.

"Alright, then," Hermione repeated, reassured. "When do we start?"

"Right now," Hannah replied. "I'd like you to tell me more about the impressions of the dreams you remember; you're also going to start keeping a journal of them, which you will use as soon as you wake up from one."

"Alright," Hermione said again, and began to recount what little she could remember of the dreams, the same as she had to Harry weeks before.

An hour later, Hermione was standing outside a Muggle pharmacy, trying to decide what to do with herself. It was barely one o'clock; her workday had hardly begun when it was interrupted by Croaker. Snorting, she turned down the alley by the pharmacy. Looking about to be sure she was alone, she cast a notice-me-not charm on herself, then turned on her heel and apparated.

As she landed in the arrivals area of the Ministry of Magic, she transfigured her jacket back into a cloak. Thankfully, she had been wearing slacks and a blouse that were perfectly acceptable in either world today, and hadn't had to change them. She had no robes to concern herself with, as she had made it quite clear after the war that she found them to be extremely impractical, and had accidentally started a new fashion trend. Instead, she wore a smart blazer that complemented her outfit.

She made her way to the elevators, then down to the Department of Mysteries, tapping her wand on the pad by the door to gain access. No one was about in the main area of the department; it seemed her colleagues hadn't yet come back from their lunch break. Either that, or they were so absorbed in what they were working on that they hadn't yet realized it was lunch time; they were that sort of department.

She bypassed the spinning room they had gotten stuck in at the end of fifth year, heading instead to a well-concealed door off to the left that led to the offices. Her own office door was still closed; she tapped her wand again to access it, noting that only Croaker had been registered by her wards while she was gone.

Depositing her cloak and bag back on their hook, she went over to her desk. On it sat a note, and a hand mirror. She picked up the note first, knowing better than to touch any objects in the department without knowing what they were.

 _Granger,_

 _This mirror is your next assignment. It arrived three months ago from an antique shop sweep. It has a clear magical signature, but the enchantments on it have yet to be identified._

 _Croaker_

She snorted. Great. An enchanted mirror. This was an intern's job!

Setting the note aside, she pulled out a new sheet of paper, a pen, her dragonhide gloves, and her wand, settling herself to examine the mirror.

It was heavy and ornate, wrought with swirls and leaves covering the back and a crown perched on top. The entire thing had been covered in gold leaf at one point; now, bare metal showed through beneath chips and wear marks. The glass surface when she turned it over was tarnished around the edges, showing the age and imperfect seal around the silver that coated the back. Overall, it was a beautiful piece of work, but that wasn't what she needed to find out. Taking out her wand, she began casting.

Hours later, she had nothing. Standard diagnostic spells had yielded nothing, as had the less standard ones. Casting various spells at the mirror had yielded nothing. Hell, even poking and prodding at the mirror had yielded nothing. Exhausted, Hermione set the mirror face-up on her desk and tilted her chair back, closing her eyes. "I wish you could just show me your origins," she grumbled.

She didn't notice the gentle light that shone from the glass, momentarily showing a beautiful woman with curling strawberry blonde hair, then a handsome man with piercingly familiar blue eyes. She was already asleep.


End file.
